7 take-aways from Nigeria’s first Immunization Collaborative peer learning exercise

7 take-aways from Nigeria’s first Immunization Collaborative peer learning exercise

Writing

On August 6, 2024, the Nigeria Immunization Agenda 2030 Collaborative concluded its first peer learning exercise with a final Assembly. This groundbreaking initiative, a partnership between The Geneva Learning Foundation, Nigeria’s National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), and UNICEF, has already engaged over 4,400 health workers from all 36 States and more than 300 Local Government Areas (LGAs) across Nigeria. The Collaborative’s innovative approach focuses on empowering health workers to identify root causes of local immunization challenges and develop practical, context-specific solutions. As the initiative continues to grow, with new members joining daily, it could help shift how Nigeria approaches immunization capacity building and problem-solving. Right after the final Assembly on 6 August 2024, Nigeria immunization specialist Jenny Sequeira and The Geneva Learning Foundation’s deputy director Charlotte Mbuh shared their initial thoughts about the exercise. Here are 7 key takeaways from their discussion. 1. Critical Thinking Evolution: Participants made …

Les visage de la vaccination 2023

Semaine mondiale de la vaccination: Que voyez-vous?

Global health, Writing

English version | Version française Ceci est la préface de la nouvelle publication Les visages de la vaccination. En savoir plus… Télécharger la collection… Chaque jour, des milliers d’agents de santé, de l’Afghanistan au Zimbabwe, se lèvent et se rendent au travail avec un seul objectif en tête : faire en sorte que les vaccins parviennent à ceux qui en ont besoin. À l’occasion de la Semaine mondiale de la vaccination du 24 au 30 avril 2023 et du lancement de la campagne « Big Catch Up », la Fondation Apprendre Genève (TGLF) a invité les membres du Mouvement pour la vaccination à l’horizon 2030 (IA2030) à partager des photographies d’eux-mêmes et de leur travail quotidien. Plus de 1 000 témoignages visuels ont été partagés. Il ne s’agit pas de clichés soigneusement composés et techniquement élaborés par des photographes professionnels, mais plutôt d’une vue authentique sur ce que signifie la vaccination dans la pratique. …

Examples of double-loop learning in global health

Five examples of double-loop learning in global health

Writing

Read this first: What is double-loop learning in global health? Example 1: Addressing low uptake of a vaccine program Single–Loop Learning: Improve logistics and supply chain management to ensure consistent vaccine availability at clinics. Double–Loop Learning: Engage with community leaders to understand cultural beliefs and concerns around vaccination, and co-design a more localized and trustworthy immunization strategy. What is the difference? Double-loop learning questions the assumption that the primary goal should be to increase uptake at all costs. It considers whether the program design respects community autonomy and addresses their real concerns. It may surface competing values of public health impact vs. community self-determination. Example 2: Responding to an infectious disease outbreak Single–Loop Learning: Rapidly mobilize health workers and supplies to affected areas to contain the outbreak following established emergency protocols. Double–Loop Learning: Critically examine why the health system was vulnerable to this outbreak, and work with communities to redesign …

Learning from Front-line Health Workers in the Climate Change Era

Learning from Frontline Health Workers in the Climate Change Era

Global health, Writing

By Julie Jacobson, Alan Brooks, Charlotte Mbuh, and Reda Sadki The escalating threats of climate change cast long shadows over global health, including increases in disease epidemics, profound impacts on mental health, disruptions to health infrastructure, and alterations in the severity and geographical distribution of diseases. Mitigating the impact of such shadows on communities will test the resilience of health infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and especially challenge frontline health workers. The need for effective and cost-efficient public health interventions, such as immunization, will evolve and grow. Health workers, approximately 70% of which are women, that provide immunization and other health services will be trusted local resources to the communities they serve, further amplifying their centrality in resilient health systems. Listening to and building upon the experiences and insights of frontline health workers as they live with and increasingly work to address the manifestations of climate change on …

Digital challenge-based learning in the COVID-19 Peer Hub

Global health, Learning, Writing

A digital human knowledge and action network of health workers: Challenging established notions of learning in global health When Prof Rupert Wegerif introduced DEFI in his blog post, he argued that recent technologies will transform the notions and practice of education. The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) is demonstrating this concept in the field of global health, specifically immunization, through the ongoing engagement of thousands of health workers in digital peer learning. As images of ambulance queues across Europe filled TV screens in 2020, another discussion was starting: how would COVID-19 affect countries with weaker health systems but more experience in facing epidemic outbreaks? In the global immunization community, there were early signs that ongoing efforts to protect children from vaccine preventable diseases – measles, polio, diphtheria – would suffer. On the ground, there were early reports of health workers being afraid to work, being excluded by communities, or having key supplies disrupted. The …

Saci in Defunking Grunter-small

Defunking Grunter

Thinking aloud, Writing

Part 1: The Journey Begins Suspended in the swirling galaxies beyond our own, the celestial stage of the Cat’s Eye Nebula shimmered. The nebula was a kaleidoscope of iridescent gases, dazzling cosmic dust, and radiant energy, an ideal sanctuary for the Astral Scholars. Their gathering place, the Obsidian Forum, was a levitating, jet-black platform, as if carved from a fragment of the universe itself. It was etched with constellations, celestial bodies, and navigational lines of ancient wormholes–an atlas of the universe under their feet. The youngest among them, Saci, was a fledgling star, her eyes twinkling with raw curiosity and a deep yearning for acceptance. A cloud of unresolved excitement perpetually surrounded her, compelling yet subtle, a characteristic trait of many passionate seekers before her. One day, during a session of interstellar navigation training, her enthusiasm came to the fore. Saci hurriedly approached the Grand Orrery, a celestial model showcasing real-time …

Young Egyptian doctor Mai Abdalla leadership innovation teamwork

Listen to the Ninth Dialogue for Learning, Leadership, and Impact

Writing

The Geneva Learning foundation’s Dialogue connects a diverse group of learning leaders from all over the world who are tackling complex learning, leadership, and impact challenges. We explore the significance of leadership for the future of our societies, explore lessons learned and successes, and problem-solve real-world challenges and dilemmas submitted by Contributors of the Dialogue. In the Geneva Learning Foundation’s Ninth Dialogue for Learning & Leadership, we start with Dr. Mai Abdalla. After studying global health security in at Yosei University South Korea and both public health and pharmaceutical science in her own country, Egypt. By the time she turned 30, Dr Abdalla had already worked with the Ministry of Health, UN agencies, and the African Union Commission. The accomplishments of her professional life are just the starting point, as we want to explore where and how did she learn to do what she does now? What has shaped her …

quandary

Listen to the Eighth Dialogue for Learning and Leadership

Leadership, Writing

Discover the leadership journeys of two remarkable learning leaders Every episode is different, drawing on the life experiences of Key Contributors and of listeners. As a listener, you can become a Contributor by sharing your own learning and leadership challenge – and what you are doing about it. Share your challenge… In the Eighth Dialogue, Karen E. Watkins and I were joined for the first time by Key Contributors Iris Isip-Tan and digital higher education strategist Keith Hampson. In Part 1 of the Dialogue – before deep-diving into the Metaverse – we explored: On the Metaverse and its significance for learning leaders In Part 2, we shifted our attention to the Metaverse, following Mark Zuckerberg‘s announcement that he is betting his company’s future on it. Here is how Marne Levine, Facebook’s chief business officer, described her vision for learning: “In the Metaverse, learning won’t feel like anything we’ve learned before. With a headset or glasses, you’ll be able to pull up …

Listen to the seventh TGLF Dialogue on learning, leadership, and impact

Leadership, Writing

Every episode is different, drawing on the life experiences of Key Contributors and of listeners who become contributors by sharing their own learning and leadership challenges – and what they are doing about them. For this Seventh Dialogue for Learning & Leadership, recorded on 26 September 2021, we have around our table for the first time three new Key Contributors. Victoria J. Marsick, PhD, is a professor of Adult and Organizational Learning in the Department of Organization & Leadership, Teachers College, Columbia University. Prior to joining Teachers College, she was a training director at the United Nations Children’s Fund. Dorothy Marcic went, she says, “from Footnotes to Footlights”. She quit academia and a regular paycheck to become a full-time playwright. She wrote two hit musicals, RESPECT, which has played 2800 performances in 72 cities and SISTAS, currently playing Off-Broadway in New York City for over six years. Nabanita De‘s full-time occupation is …

Listen to the sixth TGLF Dialogue on learning, leadership, and impact

Leadership, Writing

In this sixth Dialogue for learning, leadership, and impact on 29 August 2021, Reda Sadki and Karen E. Watkins explore: Is there a meaningful difference between change and transformation? Key Contributor Aliki Nicolaides believes that there is. She has just completed editing the new Palgrave Handbook of Learning for Transformation, a collection of more than 1,100 pages of research, thinking, and practice, exploring a more complex and deeper inquiry into the “Why of transformation.” We talk to Australian communications guru Mike Hanley about how he learned to survive, adapt, and lead an organization’s communications in a world where, he says, “everything changes, in real time, as the digital media environment shifts with technology, trends and events.” Tari Dawson is a doctor and teacher of medicine in Nigeria. She shares her leadership journey, revisiting a time during the HIV pandemic when she had to make difficult decisions to reshape an organization – and discovered that change is “a process, not a procedure.” …